family
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It Could Easily Be You
When I was ten years old, my family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just months after learning to walk again after the car accident. It was the only time we did not live in Chicago during my childhood. Shortly after moving into a big, beautiful home, we were evicted. With only a few family members in… Continue reading
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Breaking From Tradition Can Be a Good Thing
Some families keep their history alive around picnic tables, their roots watered each summer by laughter, shared meals, and stories that stretch back generations. Mine did not. On my mother’s side, there were no great migrations back home for a weekend, no sea of matching shirts declaring our kinship, no annual roll call of who… Continue reading
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Always There Are the Children
Something devastating is happening, a bone-chilling, frightening thing. The children are dying. In this year alone, I have learned of the deaths of four young people, three of them children under 25 years old. All of them were from people I know; they were firstborns, the first fruits of their mother’s wombs. It has made… Continue reading
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The Amazon Bestseller Approach: A Warning
In the words of James Baldwin, “If I love you, I have to make you conscious of what you don’t see.” Here’s the Game: Once upon a time, when print-on-demand publishing became more popular thanks to companies like Amazon and Lulu, self-published authors discovered a powerful manipulation tactic: they could reach a higher ranking by… Continue reading
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Black History Fun Fact Friday – Cane River Creole National Park – Oakland Plantation
On this day in 2016, I posted about a former slave plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana I visited that weekend. I shared my experience on this blog, but I never made it a Black History Fun Fact. As the memory popped up in my Facebook archives, I decided to add it to the collection. Below is… Continue reading
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